Authors currently have to make a choice when it comes to providing documents to their users over the Internet. If the author uses a page description language like Adobe Acrobat commercially available from Adobe, Inc., of San Jose Calif., the author can achieve a high degree of precision when it comes to printing documents: the document will print exactly as the author intended. Furthermore, printing an Adobe Acrobat document is easy for the user, performed with a single print command.
However, Acrobat has a low degree of interactivity, certain dynamically generated content isn't supported at all, and customization of the output for the user is difficult. Thousands of man hours of existing investment in HTML pages can be lost when converting to another file format, making many authors reluctant to switch formats. Furthermore, Acrobat takes a while to load itself into the user's browser, and the user is sometimes requested to upgrade the product, which takes additional time. The time required to view such a document using Adobe Acrobat can cause a user to become frustrated with the process and give up.
Acrobat isn't the only output format that has the advantages described above. Other file formats, such as the conventional FlashPaper file format allows users to use the conventional Flash Player available from Macromedia, Inc. of San Francisco Calif. to view documents. It loads much faster than Acrobat and suffers from few of its other drawbacks. However, committing to any file format different from the HTML format that many authors currently use, FlashPaper, Acrobat or any other format, can entail effort and risks that many parties are unwilling to take.
The alternative to providing documents in a page description language to users over the Internet is to continue to use HTML-based web pages as documents. HTML based documents allow the author to include interactivity (e.g. drilling down on a report) and, using technologies like ColdFusion, a web page can be precisely tailored for a user or for circumstances that exist at the time the document is requested. Existing investments in HTML can be utilized when an author continues to use HTML as the file format of documents sent to users. HTML documents are generally available to the user without the overhead of loading Acrobat, and video or other formats is only a click away.
However, printing web based documents may not produce the precise output intended by the author. For example, the right edge of a document may be cut off or printed on separate pages. Furthermore, the user interface for printing web pages is inconvenient. For example, printing web-based content can require the user to perform a number of print commands, one for each page. However, there is already so much content available in the form of HTML documents, that it would be desirable to allow an HTML source for any output document produced.
As a result of the advantages and disadvantages of each type of output, authors of web based documents are required to compromise on the type of output produced, and neither provides a truly satisfactory result.
What is needed is a system and method that can provide interactive, customizable content, but prints precisely as the author intended using an easier-to-use user interface than printing HTML documents a page at a time, does not require the discarding of all of an author's existing investment in HTML, and does not require an author to commit to a single new file format.